Social engineering incidents
277 entries spanning 1995 to 2026. Filter by how the attacker reached the human, what it cost, and whether AI was involved.
US and UK charge Scattered Spider pair tied to $115M in ransom payments
47 US organisations including healthcare, transport and technology firms · United States
On 18 September 2025 US prosecutors unsealed charges against British nationals Thalha Jubair and Owen Flowers, alleging involvement in Scattered Spider intrusions at 47 US organisations and at least $115 million in ransom payments. UK authorities separately charged the pair in connection with the September 2024 attack on Transport for London. The charging documents described a campaign built on impersonating employees to IT help desks.
Scattered Spider member sentenced to 10 years over SIM swap and phishing thefts
Cryptocurrency holders and companies targeted by the group · United States
A Florida federal court sentenced Noah Michael Urban, a member of the Scattered Spider cybercrime group, to 10 years in prison in August 2025 and ordered $13 million in restitution to 59 victims. Urban pleaded guilty to conspiracy, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft over SIM swapping and corporate phishing campaigns that drained cryptocurrency wallets and gave the group access to corporate accounts.
Scattered Spider talks help desks into resets to reach VMware ESXi and deploy ransomware
US retail, airline, transportation and insurance organisations · United States
Google's threat intelligence team published detail in July 2025 on how UNC3944, also known as Scattered Spider, was targeting VMware vSphere and ESXi environments at US retail, airline, transportation and insurance organisations. The group did not exploit a software vulnerability; it phoned IT service desks, impersonated employees to obtain credential and MFA resets, and escalated to hypervisor administration before encrypting virtual machines from the ESXi layer.
Hawaiian Airlines hit as Scattered Spider pivots to the aviation sector
Hawaiian Airlines · United States
Hawaiian Airlines confirmed in late June 2025 that a cyberattack had disrupted its IT systems, while stating that flights continued to operate safely. The FBI confirmed it was aware of Scattered Spider expanding its targeting to aviation after earlier focusing on retail and insurance. Researchers noted the incident matched the group's known tradecraft, though the airline did not formally attribute it.
Erie Insurance hit in Scattered Spider help desk campaign against insurers
Erie Insurance · United States
Erie Insurance was one of three US insurers publicly identified in June 2025 as victims of the Scattered Spider campaign against the insurance sector, alongside Aflac and Philadelphia Insurance Companies. The incidents involved theft of sensitive customer data and operational disruption, per the companies' SEC filings. The group had pivoted to insurance after earlier waves against UK retail.
Transport for London hit by Scattered Spider teens in a £29m intrusion
Transport for London · United Kingdom
Transport for London disclosed an ongoing cyberattack on 2 September 2024 that forced 148 systems offline and required about 27,000 employees to reset passwords in person. Customer data from the Oyster refunds system was exposed, and Dial-a-Ride, concessionary travel cards, digital payments and contactless ticketing rollout were disrupted. TfL put the cost at roughly £29 million. Two Scattered Spider members, Thalha Jubair and Owen Flowers, were sentenced in the UK in July 2026.
Allianz Life's Salesforce CRM emptied after social engineering
Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America · United States
Allianz Life disclosed that on 16 July 2025 a threat actor used social engineering to reach a third-party cloud-based CRM system holding its Salesforce data, affecting the majority of its roughly 1.4 million customers plus financial professionals and select employees. Have I Been Pwned recorded 1.1 million affected individuals, and about 2.8 million records from Salesforce Accounts and Contacts tables were later leaked. Exposed fields included names, dates of birth, contact details, tax IDs and professional licence data.
Qantas contact centre platform breached after help desk tricked into adding MFA
Qantas Airways · Australia
Qantas detected and contained an intrusion into a third-party customer servicing platform used by one of its contact centres in early July 2025. Roughly 5.7 million unique customers had data exposed, including names, email addresses, frequent flyer numbers, tier and points data, plus addresses for 1.3 million, dates of birth for 1.1 million and phone numbers for 900,000. No financial data, passports or credentials were taken. A criminal made contact and Qantas engaged the Australian Federal Police over extortion.
Aflac breached in insurance-sector social engineering campaign; 22.6M affected
Aflac · United States
Aflac detected suspicious activity on a limited number of systems on 12 June 2025 and disclosed the incident on 20 June, saying it was part of a cybercrime campaign against the insurance industry and that no ransomware was involved. The company later confirmed roughly 22.65 million individuals were affected, including customers, beneficiaries, employees and agents, with exposed data spanning names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, driver's licence and government ID numbers, claims data and health information.
Google's own Salesforce instance hit by UNC6040 IT-support vishing
Google · United States
Google Threat Intelligence Group disclosed in August 2025 that one of Google's own corporate Salesforce instances had been affected in June 2025 by UNC6040, the voice-phishing crew it had documented in June. The exposed data was confined to business names, phone numbers and sales notes for small and medium businesses, largely publicly available. ShinyHunters claimed 2.55 million records and demanded roughly 20 bitcoin. The wider campaign affected roughly 20 organisations across hospitality, retail and education.
Philadelphia Insurance Companies disclosed breach in insurer-focused campaign
Philadelphia Insurance Companies · United States
Philadelphia Insurance Companies was named alongside Aflac and Erie Insurance as a victim of the June 2025 Scattered Spider campaign targeting US insurers. Reporting cited SEC filings describing theft of sensitive customer data and operational disruption at the affected carriers. The campaign followed the group's earlier attacks on UK retailers.
Marks & Spencer attack tied to social engineering of outsourced service desk
Marks & Spencer Group plc · United Kingdom
Marks & Spencer suffered a cyberattack disclosed in April 2025 that suspended online ordering for weeks and left gaps on shelves. Reporting indicates the attackers obtained credentials belonging to a third-party service provider, Tata Consultancy Services, which ran parts of M&S's IT service desk, through social engineering rather than a software vulnerability. M&S later ended the service desk contract with TCS. DragonForce ransomware was deployed against the estate.
Co-op loses £206m of revenue and 6.5 million members' data to DragonForce
Co-operative Group · United Kingdom
The Co-operative Group was attacked in April 2025 in the same wave as Marks & Spencer. Attackers contacted Co-op's security leadership on Microsoft Teams on 25 April and by phone about a week later. Personal data of 6.5 million members was stolen, including names, contact details and dates of birth, though not passwords, financial details or transaction records; DragonForce claimed data on 20 million people. Co-op reported a £206 million revenue loss and weeks of empty shelves.
MGM Resorts shut down for ten days after a help desk social engineering call
MGM Resorts International · United States
MGM Resorts disclosed a cybersecurity issue on 12 September 2023 that took hotel reservation systems, digital room keys, slot machines and its website offline across US properties for about ten days. In its Q3 2023 filing MGM reported roughly $100 million of negative impact to Las Vegas Strip adjusted property EBITDAR, plus under $10 million in one-time costs, and said personal data of customers who transacted before March 2019 was stolen, including names, contact details, dates of birth and driver's licence numbers, and Social Security and passport numbers for a subset. Scattered Spider, working with ALPHV/BlackCat, claimed responsibility.
Caesars pays reported $15M ransom after outsourced IT vendor is socially engineered
Caesars Entertainment · United States
Caesars told the SEC that a social engineering attack on an outsourced IT support vendor gave attackers unauthorised access on 18 August 2023, with data taken on 23 August and the incident discovered on 7 September. The loyalty programme database was stolen, including Social Security and driver's licence numbers; roughly 41,397 Maine residents were among those notified. Caesars reportedly paid millions to prevent publication. Payment card and bank account data were not accessed.
Clorox attack traced to help desk agents resetting passwords without verification
The Clorox Company · United States
Clorox suffered an August 2023 cyberattack that halted manufacturing and caused widespread product shortages. In a July 2025 lawsuit against IT services provider Cognizant, Clorox alleged the attackers simply telephoned the outsourced service desk, impersonated Clorox employees, and were given password and multifactor resets without any identity verification. Clorox is seeking $380 million in damages; Cognizant disputes the claims.
Okta warns of a coordinated campaign against US customers' IT service desks
Multiple US-based Okta customer organizations · United States
Okta published an advisory on 31 August 2023 describing a coordinated campaign between 29 July and 19 August 2023 in which threat actors called the IT service desks of multiple US-based Okta customers and persuaded them to reset all MFA factors enrolled by highly privileged users. The actors then took over Super Administrator accounts, abused inbound federation to impersonate other users, and moved laterally. This advisory covers the same technique and window as the casino and hospitality intrusions that followed weeks later.
Coinbase employee phished by SMS then talked through by a fake IT caller
Coinbase · United States
In February 2023 Coinbase employees received SMS messages urging them to log in urgently via a supplied link. One employee entered credentials. When MFA blocked the attacker's remote login, the attacker phoned the same employee posing as Coinbase corporate IT and walked them through actions at their workstation. Coinbase's SIEM flagged the anomaly within about ten minutes and an incident responder reached the employee, who broke off contact. Only limited corporate directory information was exposed.
Twilio breached by 0ktapus SMS phishing kit that hit 163 downstream customers
Twilio · United States
In August 2022 Twilio disclosed that attackers had phished employee credentials by SMS and used them to access internal applications and a number of customer accounts. Okta's analysis of the actor, which it tracks as Scatter Swine, confirmed that 163 Twilio customers were affected, including Okta itself, and Twilio later said Authy two-factor app users were also touched. The same kit was used against more than a hundred organisations.
0ktapus SMS phishing campaign harvested 9,931 credentials across 130 organisations
Over 130 organisations targeted (Group-IB tracked campaign) · United States
Group-IB published research in August 2022 on a phishing campaign it named 0ktapus, which targeted more than 130 organisations, predominantly software, telecom and business services firms. The attackers harvested 9,931 user credentials and 5,441 multi-factor authentication codes through counterfeit Okta identity pages delivered by SMS. Publicly confirmed downstream victims of the same campaign included Twilio, Cloudflare, DoorDash and Mailchimp, with Signal users affected via Twilio.
Entry types: Incident, Campaign, Benchmark. Aggregate agency statistics are kept as benchmarks and are never summed into the counters. Methodology. Machine-readable version of this page: global-social-engineering-impact-da.vercel.app/api/incidents?q=Scattered+Spider.